The story had some interesting parts, but for long stretches it was too descriptive (ie scenery or philosophic filler)
without any action moving the story along, and became deadly dull. It could have done with some thoughtful editing prior to publication way back when. Not even Ruth Golding's brilliant reading could give the story enough lift. & my burning question... did Samuel Murdoch ever get the promised 1,500 reward?

I know that librivox is open to all readers, and thats very generous, but honestly, its so distractig to switch from a reader with a wonderful voice and gift of luring you ito the story with wonderful accents and voices, that I actually have to stop listening and consider, whether to finish or not. This just happened to me while listening to Abandoned, Wm. Clark Russell. I was so looking forward to the conclusion as Ruth Golding proceeded into Chapter 15, but Gary Oldman took over for the conclusion and I just could not listen another second. I prefer to imagine the ending rather than indure this fellows monosyllabic drone, as nails on a blackboard. Sorry Gary for calling you out but some of us should be listeners.

I cannot agree with the other two reviewers. The story is interesting and combines adventure with romance. There are some mistakes in the reading, but they are not so distracting as to take away the fun from the book.

This was one of the worst narrated books at Librivox I have ever listened to. Who proof listened to this. The first two narrators were good so that is how I at least got started into the book. Those two narrators along with Joshua and Ruth Golding were the only saving grace to this poorly narrated book. The rest of the readers were actually painful to listen to. The final chapter read by Gary O was terrible and he never even said the end. Fortunately the story itself was good enough and the narrators spoke clearly enough that I could tolerate the poorly narrated chapters. The best part of the story is the castaway portion and I thought was really the better part of the book. There were issues with the story itself and honestly sometimes the characters did not always have my sympathy. Personally I think Frank could have done a lot better than Lucretia. This is a good enough story I hope that maybe a re-recording of it might be done.